The motor vehicle lock in question is assigned to a motor vehicle door arrangement which comprises at least a motor vehicle door. The expression “motor vehicle door” is to be understood in a broad sense. It includes in particular side doors, back doors, lift gates, trunk lids or engine hoods. Such a motor vehicle door may generally be designed as a sliding door as well.
The crash safety plays an important role for today's motor vehicle locks. It is of particular importance that neither crash induced acceleration nor crash induced deformation leads to an unintended opening of the motor vehicle door which the motor vehicle lock is assigned to. The focus of the present application is to prevent an unintended opening of the motor vehicle door based on crash induced acceleration. In case of a side impact on the motor vehicle the outer door handle may be reluctant to follow the impact due to mass inertia of the outer door handle. As a result a relative movement between the outer door handle and the motor vehicle door occurs, which again may lead to an unintended opening of the motor vehicle door.
The known motor vehicle lock (US 2011/0181052 A1), which is the starting point for the invention, is provided with the usual locking elements catch and pawl, wherein the pawl may be deflected into a release position by actuation of a pawl actuation lever.
The known motor vehicle lock also comprises a lock mechanism which may be brought into different functional states such as “unlocked” and “locked” by the user. The pawl may be deflected into its released position by an outer door handle, which is connected to the pawl actuation lever, if the lock mechanism is in its unlocked state. With the lock mechanism being in its locked state an actuation of the pawl actuation lever runs free.
To guarantee a high crash safety the known motor vehicle lock comprises a crash element which is a separate component from the pawl actuation lever. By the accelerations which occur during a crash the crash element moves into a blocking position in which the crash element blocks further actuation of the pawl actuation lever.
One disadvantage of the known motor vehicle lock is the fact that before the intended blocking of the pawl actuation lever takes place, the crash element has to perform the above noted movement into the blocking position. The necessity of the movement of the crash element before the intended blocking takes place leads to undesirable reaction times of the crash safety function.
Furthermore, for the known motor vehicle lock, the constructional design of the drive train between the door handle and the pawl appears to be challenging. This is true as in a crash situation the whole drive train starting from the door handle is being blocked. In order not to run the risk of an unpredictable breakage of the drive train, this drive train has to be designed for exceptionally high forces, which leads to high material and production costs.